Malcolm was voted out during one of the most shocking Tribal Councils in Survivor history.
(Robert Voets/CBS)

The Survivor Game Changers season is officially upon us, and every week, Parade’s Josh Wigler will bring you interviews with the castaways as they’re voted off the island. Click here to make sure you don’t miss a single story, and click here to revisit our massive preseason coverage.

Ever wonder what it would look like to watch 300 people witness the Red Wedding for the first time? Wonder no more: this is what it looked like when the massive audience of the live Survivor Know-It-Alls podcast watched the widely adored Malcolm Freberg lose his third shot at the title during one of the most insane Tribal Councils in the history of the show.

This week, two losing tribes were tasked with attending Tribal and voting out a single player, resulting in an explosive war between the current versions of Mana and Nuku. People shot up out of their seats to talk to members of the other group, last-minute audibles were called, Hali Ford did not consent, an idol was played — and seconds later, the Culpeppers sent their regards, sending Malcolm home.

It was a brutal result for someone who is widely considered a Survivor triple threat, someone with proven passion for the game and someone who many people selected as their winner pick of the season. (Ahem.) How has Malcolm dealt with this bitter pill in the months since it all went down? Did he indeed cuss down the ramp and proceed to vomit, as promised? Let’s get to the bottom of it all in today’s exit interview with the once and future Mr. Survivor.

Malcolm Freberg (Philippines, Caramoan): I hate you. This is all your fault.

Josh Wigler (Survivor press, Parade): What! Why me? What did I do?

Malcolm: Because I’m blaming everyone who picked me to win, and I know you did too. The only way it could have gone this badly is that I was cursed by all of the journalists.

Wigler: I definitely felt like we were cursing you with our winner pick, but I could never have fathomed the severity of the curse.

Malcolm: Like, it compounded on itself. Each one of you picking me cost me five spots or so.

Wigler: Sounds about right. (Laughs.) Are you okay?

Malcolm: You know what? Yeah. I mean, I’ve watched myself get booted a couple of times now. This is unfortunately nothing new. But this time around? I’m sure you and the Monday morning quarterbacks are going to come up with something else I could have done…

Wigler: I don’t know about thaaaat.

Malcolm: Well, I’m glad you agree. But that feeling of, what the hell else am I supposed to do? And seeing it last night, and the way it was portrayed? Yeah, that’s about the way it went. It confirmed that I really couldn’t have done anything. I’m not losing too much sleep over it. I’m just cursing luck, more than anything.

Wigler: How did you get through watching it last night?

Malcolm: With rum!

Wigler: No need to ask why the rum’s gone.

Malcolm: Yeah, the episode made it very obvious why the bottle’s empty this morning. (Laughs.)

Wigler: Before we even unpack Tribal, I would love to know where your head was at on the final morning you spent in the game. How were you feeling about your place in Survivor in that moment? You’re on the one tribe that has an original Mana numbers advantage, but you’re three Manas down to ten Nukus in the overall field. What was your view of where you stood in everything?

Malcolm: In the short term, everything was hunky dory. I was sitting in a great spot. I was right in the middle of that tribe, which was my gameplan going into it. I didn’t have to make any moves. I was just being nice and making sure I wasn’t picking a side too early. I loved where I was in the context of that new Nuku tribe. In terms of big game? Tony and Caleb going out did not make me happy. Those were guys I planned on keeping around for a long time. Every time we learned about this — Tony goes, which I didn’t want, but I had to jump on board with — your end-game plans have to shift. Then Caleb goes, and damn it, there’s another one gone. You have to keep rethinking: what’s the new chart to the end of this game? In the long term sense, it wasn’t looking fantastic, especially because there was this sense that we were really going to keep playing along original tribe lines. That dynamic, especially after the Caleb vote, was becoming clearer and clearer. At the time, I thought I was good for a while. I’ll hang out and have some fun. But the original course I charted to get to the end was going to have to be heavily altered because I kept losing people I wanted to go to the end with.

Wigler: You lose this immunity challenge. You already know two tribes are going to Tribal Council, and then Probst drops the bomb that the two tribes are going to vote out one person. What’s going through your head as you’re chewing on this twist?

Malcolm: Fireworks are going off. This is fantastic! I loved it. In the immediate aftermath… I’m better at counting than Brad. I can count to six. I know that they have five. We loved it. I’ll tell you this, too. Varner was bawling his eyes out after the challenge, because he cost us a huge lead and knew it. Don’t quote me on this, someone do the research, but I think this was the same day he got voted out last time, and that was a big deal for him. He knows this, and he blew a huge lead in the challenge. I don’t remember exactly how he got stuck in the last role for that, but he dropped the ball like three times and really blew the challenge. He was bawling his eyes out. Immediately, me and JT were looking at each other thinking, “I think we might need to get rid of Varner.” And you’ve never seen somebody so heartbroken in your life. And then Probst says: “We’re only voting out one person.” And you see Varner just light up. He knows it. He’s perfectly good again. He goes from crying his eyes out to the biggest smile of his life in a window of sixty seconds. And I thought it was great.

Wigler: You get back to camp. Varner says at Tribal that you all talked through every possible scenario. Give me a sense of how that played out. What was that afternoon like on Nuku?

Malcolm: We get back. We walk up the beach. We just lost. People are pretty upset. Varner does his little apology thing. But he has that big old smile on his face, because he realizes the numbers, too. I think I’m the one who says, “Everybody, sit your asses down. This is not going to be as easy as we think it’s going to be.” When it’s unprecedented like that? Sandra immediately tells us we’re voting out Sierra, which is sort of where I was leaning having thought it through before getting to camp. I didn’t fight it too hard. The biggest thing was making sure we kept JT on board. I think a couple of people mentioned Brad, but I knew JT had talked so much about liking Brad that we didn’t want to piss off a guy we needed for a number. There’s a brief conversation. It doesn’t take long to land on Sierra. Then everyone else relaxes. But then it’s me and Aubry, sitting there for three or four hours, talking through every crazy scenario that could possibly happen. Varner would jump in, others would come in, and I think we were annoying people by the end of it. Everyone was telling us to calm down. But when you’re in an unprecedented, never-before-seen situation? I’m not going to get caught with my pants down… which was obviously foreshadowing. We talked through every single possible scenario, and JT doing what he did never even popped into my head.

Wigler: You get to Tribal Council. As you mentioned, you already have a sense that things are going to go along original tribal lines. You know you have six to their five. Are you feeling confident right up until the moment JT stands up to talk to Brad, which is when you said you started wetting yourself?

Malcolm: (Laughs.) Well, I was feeling confident even after that for a little while. JT stood up pretty early in that Tribal Council. They kind of showed that me and JT were close. We had been bromancing hard for a lot of days. That was sort of my role on that tribe. It was condoned by my original tribe mates, because we knew we might need JT down the road, so it was, “Yep, go kiss his ass, say what he wants you to. You need to go bond with JT.” So I was close with JT. Even when he stood up, he told me, “I’m going to go tell Brad he’s safe.” And I’m like, “Why?” And then he just stands up and does it. In my head, I’m not thinking that’s the end of the world. He’s just trying to keep his old partner informed and on his good side. It wasn’t until about maybe halfway or two-thirds of the way through the Tribal that something felt wrong. Something’s not quite right. But obviously it wasn’t enough to rattle us into changing the plan.

Wigler: What was happening in the group huddle? I mean, I don’t even know which group huddle I’m asking about.

Malcolm: Yeah, that’s not an easy question to ask. You saw maybe six “Tribal Huddles,” to coin a term. There were at least 20 or 30. That went on forever. These crazy groups of people. At one point, I was even huddled up with Sierra, and we were talking about things, even though she’s about to vote for me and I’m about to vote for her. Everything’s just bonkers. And Hali and JT are the ones who are running back and forth a lot. What happens is with Hali… I don’t know where the hell Hali’s head is at often in Tribal Council. She has a habit of saying things that get her into trouble. She wanted us to vote Brad, but we knew that JT liked Brad. We thought we needed JT. We didn’t want to go that way. Our other thought with Hali was, and we obviously didn’t know what happened with the Caleb vote; we had no information on that vote. We don’t know her standing on that tribe. We just want to keep her safe. If we’re trying to play along original tribe lines, then our idea was to keep Hali safe and give her plausible deniability in her tribe and keep her out of this. Then it’s JT running back and forth. I don’t know if he knew about the idol. I don’t think he did, but I don’t know. He runs over there and he doesn’t tell us that he told Brad about us voting for Sierra, just that he was keeping Brad safe. Then about two-thirds of the way through, and we’ve already been through about a dozen of these huddles, his demeanor shifts big time. You didn’t see this in the episode, but JT knew something was wrong, two-thirds of the way through this Tribal Council. He’s sitting there saying, “Guys, we need to change the vote. Guys, we need to change the vote.” And that’s why it stretched a lot longer, because he was trying to convince us to do something. But we’re all sitting there and thinking, “Why? Why, JT? We don’t understand.” And he wouldn’t tell us that he told them exactly who we were voting for. He’s telling us to change the vote, but not telling us why. It’s like a kid who wants to admit half of what he’s done wrong, because it’ll mitigate the punishment later. If he just told us that everything is different… but because he didn’t want to own up to it, he just sat there with his head in his hands, before the vote even started. He knew something was wrong, and that was a big part of what happened.

Wigler: Tai plays the idol on Sierra. You know that all of your tribe’s votes have just been negated. What do you think is about to happen?

Malcolm: The minute Sierra stands up and starts walking to Probst, I nearly pooped myself. Beforehand, we all talked as a tribe, and me and Sandra kind of agreed that it would be me or her that the votes were going to come at. Oh, I just remembered. I actually think at one point Hali told me, “They’re going to vote for you. They’re going to vote for you!” And of course they’re voting for me or Sandra. So alright, they’re coming for me. Well, we have six people. The odds of them having an idol and playing it correctly are so absurd — if you don’t have a boneheaded Alabama cowboy telling them exactly where to play it! But the minute Sierra plays it, I went, “Oh, sh–.” The minute Sierra stood up, I knew it was over.

Wigler: Your name comes up. How much do you remember about what happened next? For example, you received the kiss of death from Sierra. Do you even remember that?

Malcolm: Sierra is my good buddy in real life. You know my Dirty 30 connections. I think I grabbed her leg, because she’s my friend, and that’s why she gave me the kiss. And then I think she said, “I love you.” But they cut that out. And Culpepper said something too, over-the-top. Sandra got furious and started bitching while I was on my way out. There was a lot of mumbling and grumbling. They showed some of it after I walked off, people talking on their way out of Tribal. But the minute my name popped up? I think Sandra and Varner both squeaked. I got the kiss. Culpepper said something nice; I don’t remember what it was. But that doesn’t really make it any easier. (Laughs.)

Wigler: You get to Ponderosa, which is already one of the greatest pre-jury crews ever between you, Tony and Ciera. How did you explain what happened to them? Did they help you wrap your head around it at all?

Malcolm: I remember walking in and their faces made me feel a little better, because they were in total shock. One of the things you do at Ponderosa is you try to guess who’s coming next. To see how stunned they were made me feel a little bit better about the situation. They were like, “How the hell did that happen?” And I was like, “Pull up a chair. Let me explain this to you.” (Laughs.) I think a lot of it flew over Caleb’s head. Tony… I spent a lot of time with Tony and Caleb. Oh my god, I spent a lot of time with those two. A lot of it went over Caleb’s head, and Tony was just shaking his head and pacing because he got so angry on my behalf. I adore Tony. And Ciera was sitting there, picking out every detail, making me rehash every little minor thing that happened, and explain the twist. She wanted to know every freaking detail. It was an interesting crew to go back to.

Wigler: How much did you blame JT in the moment, and how much do you blame him now?

Malcolm: In the moment, walking out of Tribal, call it 50% blame. Give me a day to work through what must have happened, it was probably 80% blame. Today? It’s 100%. We were tight. I had been warned by a former player: “Don’t let the cowboy think for himself.” But I didn’t think it was going to go that bad.

Wigler: Is he still off of the Christmas card list?

Malcolm: I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never sent a Christmas card in my life. (Laughs.) But JT… I sent him a text last night. We’re still buddies. I love the man. Just because somebody screws you over in a game on accident doesn’t mean you hate him. But I told him I was going to talk sh– about him today, because that’s just ridiculous. It doesn’t even make sense to me. This far down the road, you have to come back to our camp. How did you think this was going to work well for you?

Wigler: Have you done the post-mortem on the twist? As objectively as you can possibly get, given that you’re the one who gets blasted out as a result of it — and you have had a lot of time to chew on this — do you think it’s a fair twist?

Malcolm: Before I become objective, let me say that I f—king hate this twist. But now that I have that out of the way… in the moment? I remember thinking it was unfair to the other tribe! (Laughs.) Obviously I have had a lot of time to think about this. I don’t love that we didn’t get to play [with the other tribe]. I had to go to Tribal Council with a bunch of people I hadn’t even spoken to yet. In an abstract sense, that hurts me, because that’s what I’m best at. Give me a few minutes with somebody and I can usually make it a lot harder for you to want to vote me out. But objectively though? This is why the show is still so good after 17 years. I hate it, and I’m glad that so many people are pissed off that I’m gone. But as a fan of the show, this is why the show is still so great after 17 years. It’s because they try things, and sometimes it’s terrible and it gets me kicked off so I hate it, but it’s exciting! Fans like it and it keeps fans watching. That’s why we still get to do this so many years after the beginning.

Wigler: Are you going to play Survivor again?

Malcolm: Man. Let me scrape the pieces of my ego off the floor real quick and put myself back together before you ask such a hard question. (Laughs.) No, part of the reason I had such a big reaction to getting kicked off is that it felt like the end of Survivor for me. Three times is sort of the soft cap on it, right? I know that Cirie and Ozzy just blew the lid off of that. But it really felt like the end of it. But if I got the call again? Considering that I didn’t even get to play this time? I was just falling over things and laughing and making jokes. I hadn’t even played yet! So if they call again? There’s no way I’m saying no.

Wigler: Fourth time’s the charm!

Malcolm: (Laughs.) It worked once before.

Wigler: Unless four is an unlucky number for you now, Malcolm. You have a turbulent history with the number four on Survivor.

Malcolm: I also just have to be careful, because I keep going back, and I keep doing worse! If I go back, I’m destined to be a first boot!

Wigler: Well, I was going to say that the one good thing to come from all of this is that time travel has been confirmed, right?

Malcolm: (Laughs.)

Wigler: You went out fourth here. I do believe Jimmy T from Survivor Nicaragua went out fourth. The story suddenly writes itself.

Malcolm: You know I back all of your crazy, kooky conspiracy theories, Josh. Whatever you want to tell yourself? Yeah, I’m in.

Watch the video below to see three hundred Survivor fans react to Malcolm’s elimination.

Josh Wigler is a writer, editor and podcaster who has been published by MTV News, New York Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Comic Book Resources and more. He is the co-author ofThe Evolution of Strategy: 30 Seasons of Survivor, an audiobook chronicling the reality TV show’s transformation, and one of the hosts of Post Show Recaps, a podcast about film and television. Follow Josh on Twitter @roundhoward.